I recently watched a great job search webinar delivered by my fellow coach and friend, Anish Majumdar. While he was sharing tips about crafting an effective resume, he said a few lines that I just couldn’t shake:
“Don’t expect any employer to read between the lines on your resume…”
“They don’t know you!”
“You have to tell them!”
I’m paraphrasing slightly, but the essence and power of these three statements is clear. One of the mistakes I have seen clients repeatedly make when discussing their resumes is assuming knowledge on the part of their audience. As they distill their stories into concise bullet points (no easy feat), the complete, first-hand narrative they have in their head is somehow assumed to be accessible to their readers who, “should just understand what I mean.” The simple question I respond with is, “how?”
Unless you possess powers of telepathy and/or your target audience has ESP (Extra Sensory Perception), there is no transmission network yet in existence to share your thoughts/memories/knowledge with another human that ultimately doesn’t rely on speech or the written word. Until we develop the ability to directly beam our thoughts via WiFi or Bluetooth, we have to make the implicit, explicit -- and tell our audience exactly what we mean.
There are several communication dangers you can encounter when you assume the type or degree of knowledge on the part of the target audience reading your resume. Here are three key things you don’t know about your readers that should encourage you to be explicit in telling them your career story...
3 Reasons Why There’s No Reading Between the Lines on Your Resume
1) You don’t know who will be the first person that reads your resume
When you send your resume to an employer, you have no way of knowing if a junior recruiter, head of HR, hiring manager, or CEO will be the first person reading your resume. Each afore-mentioned position carries with it varied lenses, motivations, and goals when reviewing your resume. Though in a perfect world everyone on the employer-side would be working in perfect harmony in the hiring process, we know that’s not always the case.
Resume Tell-Them-Tip: Your resume needs to provide useful content and a clear narrative that is accessible to anyone who might read it -- regardless of their level of seniority. This is not to say that a CEO and a junior recruiter would glean the exact same takeaways from your resume -- that’s not true. What is true, is that readers at either end of the experience spectrum should be able to easily understand the value that you can add to their organization. Your value is best communicated by honing in on the problems that you can solve that are relevant to the employer, and demonstrating how you have successfully solved them in the past. Alleviating pain points is universally understood.
2) You don’t know what level of knowledge, technical or otherwise, they have
Job seekers who work in technical fields such as IT or the life sciences by default have to demonstrate knowledge of and experience with myriad technical skills, tasks, and processes. While every industry and function has its own jargon, too much jargon or in-the-weeds technical detail can be a resume killer. Speaking back to “who” will read your resume first, while a technical recruiter in the IT field should have a fair command of the jargon, their knowledge likely runs wider than it does deep since they may recruit across many roles. The hiring manager who is head of software engineering, on the other hand, will have a far more in-depth knowledge and understanding of the jargon and how it should be accurately applied.
Resume Tell-Them-Tip: Given that you can’t anticipate the depth of domain knowledge on the part of your reader, the onus is on you to strike the right balance. You must walk the fine line between including enough of the important technical keywords to be dangerous -- but not so much that you risk potentially going over the head of a less technical reader. While it’s important to optimize the keywords in your resume to try to get through the ATS (Applicant Tracking System), a human with varying degrees of technical knowledge will be the final arbiter of your fate. Humans need more than technical terms to judge your value. At best, they need these terms woven into a narrative. Put another way, ensuring that you include “all” the right keywords shouldn’t come at the cost of telling a compelling story about how your actions benefited your company or clients. Technical manuals are dull for a reason — why would you want your resume to read like one?
3) You don’t know if they will connect the dots you feel are so clear within your story
Going back to Anish’s words, when it comes to an employer’s ability to read between the lines, the main reason they are unable to do so is that, “they don’t know you!” Unless you are submitting your resume to a former boss or colleague at a new company, no employer has any prior knowledge of you beyond what you tell them. As I used to tell my students when I worked in the college setting, “if it’s not on your resume, they don’t know it!”
Resume Tell-Them-Tip: Only you know how many levers you pulled, in what sequence, and which were most critical to making your stellar outcome occur. The employer was not by your side or looking over your shoulder as you worked your magic. They don’t know the specific challenges you encountered or how difficult your task was. Your resume should be explicit in telling them the key moving parts of your story, in enough detail, to give them a clear picture of not only what you did, but why it matters. Details and context can make or break your resume.
It’s not an employer’s job to read between the lines or connect the dots on your behalf to demonstrate why you are the best candidate. You are the only person that holds all the facts about your achievements and resulting value-add. Assuming otherwise in your written or verbal communications can hinder the job search success of even the most amazing candidate by making you seem generic.
Like my friend’s mom told us when we were know-it-all teenagers, “ Don’t assume — it makes an ass out of u and me.”
If you would like to discuss how you can tell clearer stories on your resume, I’d love to support you! BOOK NOW for a free resume consultation.
niiato@avenircareers.com | Call/text 917-740-3048